One christmas eve, the children appeared carrying a box.
"Dad," they squealed, "surprise!"
I peered in and saw two little balls of fluff. One was a black tom with white paws.
"He's Blackberry,'' they explained.
The other was a brown and white female whom they had named Blossom.
The kittens went in the hall along with a smart litter tray. Unfortunately, toilet protocol wasn't in their genes. Blackberry and Blossom shat everywhere but in the tray. One day they did it in the enamelled Victorian bread bin-on the bread. That was it. I threw the bread bin away and, despite the protests of my children, the young cats (as they had now become) went out to the shed. They would never come back into the house, I said.
Years passed. Blackberry and Blossom grew to be expert killers of small mammals. They liked to smear the blood of their victims on our front step, as a sign of respect. Our house began to smell like an abattoir.
Like the cats, the children also grew, and the time came when the older ones could manage the school bus. A routine developed. Every morning, we'd pick our way over the door step, littered with twists of gut and bloody flaps of skin, tumble into the car and drive to the post office, where the bus stopped.
After this I would drive home, and I would usually meet one of my neighbours on the road, coming the other way, driving like a bat out of hell. Bloody man, I always thought, he's going to kill something one day, going at that speed.
And then one day, as I made the return journey a little later than usual, I saw something dead on the road. I pulled up and wound the window down. It was a black cat with white paws. There was blood on the tarmac. It couldn't be Blackberry, I told myself. He was big; this was a small cat. Then I remembered my own father and how he had deflated, when he died, like a punctured Li-lo.
I went home. "You know that bloody man who always drives like a lunatic," I said to my wife, "I think he's killed Blackberry."
"No."
"Well, there's a dead cat on the road which looks like him."
My wife went off to look, and came back. She wasn't certain either.
"Blackberry might just appear," she said. "We should wait."
We waited. By the following morning the birds had eaten the eyeballs of the corpse, leaving two seeping pink hollows, and the fur was stiff and filthy.
"Is that ours?" the children chanted, as we passed on the way to school.
"Dunno," I said, but I knew now it had to be.
On the way home I stopped at the corpse again. I was going to get out and throw the body in the ditch. But now I had accepted that it was Blackberry, I did not want to touch it. I went home. Dermot was painting the house. "I'll do it," he said. He borrowed a spade and went and did it.
That evening I told the children that Blackberry definitely was dead. Blossom moped for a few days, and my heart hardened towards my lunatic neighbour. Every time I passed him, I glared and mouthed, "Cat killer." But he was always driving so fast that I doubt he ever noticed.
Then my car broke down, outside our house. This is why I have RAC Homestart, I thought. I made the call and an hour later a mechanic appeared.
"Lift the bonnet, please," he asked.
As I did, I heard mewling. When I got the bonnet right up, I saw Blossom sitting on a small ledge behind the engine. She'd climbed up from below. The mechanic leaned forward and smacked her face. She squealed, and bolted.
"Sorry, I had to do that," said the mechanic, before I could say anything. "Cats are forever getting up into engines like that. It's very common. They like the warmth. Look at the hair on the shelf. Your cat's been at it for years."
I peered at the shelf. It was covered with hair. Years' and years' worth, but all black and white, not brown and white.
"What's wrong with getting a bit of warmth now and again?" I asked.
"What's wrong with it?" he said. "I'll tell you what. Your cat's up in the engine, asleep; you jump in and drive off quickly; the cat hasn't time to jump out. Now you're motoring. Your cat's holding on desperately, but eventually he tires, then he falls, then he hits the tarmac, and bosh, even at ten miles per hour, he splits his head and he's dead."
This was news to me.
"How far could a cat hold on?" I wondered aloud.
The mechanic looked around. "About halfway up that hill," he said. He was pointing at more or less the spot where I had found Blackberry's body.
"You'd be amazed how often people kill their own cats like that. Now, could you fire the engine, Mr G?bler?"
